Reflections

The end of every year always brings about a time of reflection and this year is no exception. For a baby organization (just 4 years old) we’ve already done a lot for conservation, and our BEARTREK-inspired television special ‘Bears of the Last Frontier‘ was a huge hit – it went out to 200 million homes around the world. We’re endlessly thankful to PBS and National Geographic for making the program a big success.

We’ve published a fantastic book with Abrams Publishing for the program, a beautiful book with outstanding pictures and writing that keeps the conservation and compassion sparked with the television program alive.

Chris got to talk about bears on Letterman, bringing Bears of the Last Frontier and conservation to the late night audience. BBC, PBS and National Geographic are lining up to work with us more and now we’ve just learned that we won a CINE award for the Bears of the Last Frontier program.

But we still need your help. Our small team is working hard to complete BEARTREK – we plan to film our last location next year – the ARCTIC. There’s some amazing work going on out there from Greenland to Canada, Alaska to Svalbard. Our aim is to tell the story of climate change through the eyes of a polar bear family, and we are gearing up in a big way – it’s going to be such a wonderful addition to our other BEARTREK locations – Peru, Borneo, and Alaska. This picture shows Dr Nick Lunn in Canada with a young polar bear cub (check out those paws!).

Over the last three years the BEARTREK campaign has already provided $40,000 to help his research on polar bears and climate change.

I was interviewed by a British web TV company this morning, and I told the journalist that we are “redefining conservation”, and that “BEARTREK is as much about world peace as it is about wildlife”. She went quiet for a few moments, then took a breath and said, “I’ve never come across anything quite like this – it’s so refreshing”.